Hope rising

I had a bad few days physically again before Christmas, the fatigue flared up with a vengeance after going to work leaving me feeling really ill and fed up - I thought I had seen the back of it for a while.  I sunk pretty low one day before I was able to get hold of myself, turn to God and pray.  I've learnt over the years that its no use pretending, actually just like in the psalms God wants us to be real.  So I am, I pour out my feelings in prayer and turn to Him for help. 

Art journaling is a real help in this situation because I can express myself in paint and colour together with words.  I did two pages while I was feeling like this.

This one, I started off in a very low place so decided I would do the page all black and grey - just like I was feeling.  But as I worked and wrote the journaling out and prayed, I started to feel a lot better.  When I turn my eyes on God and off me, as I've said before, things always seem better.

The backround is acrylic and then stenciling and stamping in shades of grey and black.  I added my home made texture paste through a stencil and I love the effect:

I stamped the clocks to show this sense of waiting to be better, waiting on God for strength.  The page was going to be in unrelieved black and grey when I started, but by the time I finished I was so much more positive that I had to add white, hence the star which I embossed in white snowflake embossing powder:

I wrote the journaling on a scrap of paper, folded it and glued it:

My other page is much brighter:

The backround is blue acrylic with white, and this lovely heart stamp which came free with Craft Stamper magazine a few months ago.  

The paper circles and pieces are from Christmas wrapping paper, I loved the trees and snowflakes and the colours:

I journaled round the circles and pieces:

 

So after art journaling therapy and a few days rest I felt much better and was able to enjoy Christmas with my family.  In fact its still going on!  

I hope you have all had a happy time too.